Nadia Myre

This post is about Nadia Myre's exhibition Balancing Acts, now on at the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto until mid-September.  Nadia Myre is of mixed Algonquin and French Canadian heritage.  In 2014 she won the Sobey award, Canada's $50,000 prize for artists under 40 years old.

Sharing Platform 2018  ceramic, various oxides, stainless stell thread  Nadia Myre

From a distance, the artwork in the above photo looks like an antique sweetgrass basket, but on closer examination the materials are like beads.  Maybe it was made by an indigionous woman from long ago, presented for us to admire in this respectful museum setting.  But the artist, Nadia Myre, has fooled us.  Although she is indigionous, the 'basket' is brand new, made in 2018, from ceramic copies of clay shards that the artist found on the banks of the Thames river in London, England.

When Europeans arrived in the New World in the 1600s, tobacco use became popular and clay tobacco pipes pre-stuffed with tobacco werer manufactured in London and Glasgow.    The pipe had a bowl and an elongated stem that was broken off in segments as the tobacco was smoked.  It is these shards and segments that were collected by the artist and her son.

The exhbition includes large-scale digital photographs such as the one above, entitled Code Switching: Pipe Beads (2017). 

Tobacco Barrel 2018  ceramic, oxides, stainless steel thread, Nadia Myre

Nadia Myre's deep respect or and committment to the act of making things by hand is evident as she explores the politics of identity and belonging through poetic, feminist backdrops of craft, care and resilience.  (wall text, textile museum of Canada)

In this body of work, she makes new objects and images that demonstrate how institutionalized archaelogical narratives can be easily destablized.   She also shows how museums simultaneously preserve and erase cultural context.

Besides the work with pipe beads, there are several large scale digital photos in the exhibition.  Above is Gathering Sky 2016, an image of a net superimposed over an atmospheric blue and white sky.  But sky is impossible to contain.   Click here for a pdf that will explain further about Nadia Myre's work.

Scarscapes 2  Time  seed beads and thread  Nadia Myre

Nadia Myre uses photographs, beadwork and textiles to represent human presence.

Between 2005 and 2013 Myre invited people to cut or tear and then mend their scars, both real and symbolic, on stretched canvas fabric and, as well, to write about these scars.  Over the 8 years, 1400 canvases and accompanying texts were created for this Scar Project.    As a follow up to that project, Myre made loom woven beadworks that isolated the most prevalent motifs: sorrow, love, healing and survival.  Scarscapes (2009) and Scarscapes 2 (2015) are in the current exhibition.

Scarscapes 2 2015  Mind  Loss  Time  Nadia Myre

human interaction
environmental change
cultural production

Meditation  (respite 01) 2017 digital print (above)  is a large scale photograph, the first thing the visitor sees upon entering the exhibition.  The size of the photo and the repetitive handwork depicted in it prepares the viewer for a contemplative experience in the rest of the exhibition.

I also want to mention a project not included in this exhibition, but that is an important work for Canada.  Between 1999 and 2002, Nadia Myre organized the Indian Act project, in which she enlisted over 230 friends, colleagues and strangers to help her bead over every word of the Indian Act.   Each English word was covered up with white beads, all negative spaces with red beads.  Very labour intensive, beautiful, and political, the beaded works call attention to that colonial legislation and  provide a step forward for social change.

Nadia Myre asks enduring questions around colonial legacies and I felt lucky to be able to view her new work.